China Cat Sunflower

Never understood why people liked the Grateful Dead in such a fanatical manner, but this tune is impossibly funky. Jerry Garcia is pretty classy on this.



Poor ole Jerry was a decent guitar player but could never really sing; somehow he got away with it for 30 odd years. Bob Weir was pretty OK but no match for Jorma Kaukonen of the Airplane, Mike Bloomfield or any of those guys who were around at the time. Look out for a young Bill Gates on bass, before he invented an operating system!

Anyhoo - think the reason I never really dug the Dead was because, as in this case, their tunes tended to go on into never-ending culs de sac  unlike their San Francisco rivals the Jefferson Airplane, who always kept things tight, could sing way better and had better players on bass and lead gtr., at least in terms of making popular music.
One sad thing is seeing Ron 'Pigpen' McKernan in his cowboy hat tapping tambourine at the back of this. I think he lasted only a few months after this was shot. The profits of Jack Daniels declined significantly that year.